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But there is a difficulty affecting this entire settlement:
Eternity is characteristic of the Intellectual-Principle, time of
the soul- for we hold that time has its substantial being in the
activity of the soul, and springs from soul- and, since time is a
thing of division and comports a past, it would seem that the
activity producing it must also be a thing of division, and that
its attention to that past must imply that even the All-Soul has
memory? We repeat, identity belongs to the eternal, time must be
the medium of diversity; otherwise there is nothing to
distinguish them, especially since we deny that the activities of
the soul can themselves experience change.
Can we escape by the theory that, while human souls- receptive of
change, even to the change of imperfection and lack- are in time,
yet the Soul of the All, as the author of time, is itself
timeless? But if it is not in time, what causes it to engender
time rather than eternity?
The answer must be that the realm it engenders is not that of
eternal things but a realm of things enveloped in time: it is
just as the souls [under, or included in, the All-Soul] are not
in time, but some of their experiences and productions are. For a
soul is eternal, and is before time; and what is in time is of a
lower order than time itself: time is folded around what is in
time exactly as- we read- it is folded about what is in place and
in number.
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